Red squirrels living in Canada’s Yukon territory can have a pretty hard knock life. Bitterly cold winters, resource scarcity, intense competition for habitat, threats from large predators like the Canada lynx, and even take big reproductive risks for their genetic fitness. All of these stressors take their toll on these…
Read MoreThis 400-pound prehistoric salmon had tusks like a warthog
About five million years ago, the North American Pacific Northwest was teeming with some pretty big fish that would have made the continent’s biggest salmon runs look small. An eight to 10-feet-long prehistoric salmon species called Oncorhynchus rastrosus stalked the seas and streams of the Miocene. It weighed upwards of…
Read MoreThese birds help humans hunt for honey—but it’s not as sweet as you might think
What’s the weirdest thing you learned this week? Well, whatever it is, we promise you’ll have an even weirder answer if you listen to PopSci’s hit podcast. The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week hits Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and everywhere else you listen to podcasts every-other Wednesday morning. It’s your…
Read MoreBioluminescence may have evolved 300 million years earlier than scientists previously thought
Many marine organisms–including sea worms, some jellyfish, sea pickles, and more–can emit ethereal glow through a process called bioluminescence. The evolutionary origins of this light production remain a mystery, but an international team of scientists have found that bioluminescence may have first evolved in a group of marine invertebrates called…
Read MoreLampreys offer clues to the origin of our fight-or-flight instinct
Lampreys look like something out of a horror movie, with their sucky mouths chock full of teeth, eel-like bodies, and parasitic behaviors. These “water vampires” represent a bit of an evolutionary fork in the road between vertebrates and invertebrates, and the scientific debate about just how closely related we are…
Read MoreDaddy long-legs-inspired robot could one day squirm through Martian caves
Robotic engineers are no stranger to turning to nature for inspiration. In recent years, birds, dogs, extinct sea creatures, and even humans themselves have all served as jumping off point for new mechanical designs. Now, researchers from Stanford are citing the Harvestman spider, better known as a daddy long-legs as…
Read MoreNew species of extinct marine reptile found with help from 11-year-old child
Paleontologists already know that the extinct marine reptile ichthyosaurs were enormous. Some newly described jawbone fossils uncovered in England represent a new ichthyosaur species. The bones indicate that the ocean titan may have been over 82 feet long, and even pushed the possible limits of vertebrate size. The new find…
Read MoreThis butterfly hybrid thrived against evolutionary odds
Life may “find a way,” but how living things evolve is not a neat and orderly process. Instead of a tidy family tree with straight lines added for each new generation, the birth of a new species is much more tangled in reality. New research into one butterfly genus found…
Read MoreGrizzlies are getting killed by roads, but the risks are bigger than roadkill
More than 4 million miles of roads crisscross the US. So it’s little surprise that roadkill makes up a big chunk of the country’s animal deaths: By 1998 it had surpassed hunting as “the leading direct human cause of vertebrate mortality on land.” Today, wildlife officials in California are concerned…
Read MoreHow super resilient tardigrades can fix their radiation-damaged DNA
Microscopic tardigrades have fascinated scientists for their incredible toughness since they were first discovered back in 1773. They can sense when it’s time to go dormant and enter a tun state under harsh conditions. Tardigrades can even withstand dangerous levels of radiation and a surprising mechanism in the DNA may…
Read More